37-Article Text-209-1-10-20190619

BETTER MUST COME: CITIZENSHIP AND BELONGING
AFTER STATELESSNESS
PATRICK BALAZO *
In light of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee’s global #IBELONG Campaign to
end statelessness by 2024, this paper examines the benefits of citizenship acquisition among Sri
Lanka’s previously stateless Up-Country Tamil population. From 1948 until 2003, the Up-Country
Tamil population was stateless and excluded from the Sri Lankan political process, though with
the 2003 grant of citizenship Sri Lanka was celebrated as an example of what it means to
successfully end statelessness. Using a liberal theory of citizenship extended by the Rancièrian
concept of dissensus, and based on qualitative interviews and questionnaire surveys conducted in
Sri Lanka between July and August 2016, this paper identifies potential shortcomings of citizenship
acquisition that clash with the promise of the #IBELONG Campaign and the narrative of Sri
Lanka’s success in ending statelessness: a rural rights deficit and a shared absence of belonging
despite the acquisition of citizenship.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction............................................................................................................... 6
A Conceptual Framework ................................................................................ 7
B The UNHCR #IBELONG Campaign .......................................................... 10
C Methods ...................................................................................................... 12
The Up-Country Tamils and Sri Lanka — A Historical Overview ........................ 13
A The Colonial Period .................................................................................... 13
B After Independence .................................................................................... 16
Findings and Analysis ............................................................................................. 17
A Four Human Rights: Healthcare, Education, Employment and Political
Participation................................................................................................ 17
1 Healthcare ...................................................................................... 19
2 Education........................................................................................ 20
3 Employment ................................................................................... 22
4 Political Participation ..................................................................... 23
5 Belonging ....................................................................................... 25
Discussion ............................................................................................................... 28
A Discussion .................................................................................................. 29
1 The Rural Rights Deficit ................................................................ 29
2 Belonging in Place ......................................................................... 30
3 De Facto Citizenship ...................................................................... 31
4 Seeking Dissensus .......................................................................... 32
Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 34
Appendix A ............................................................................................................. 38
A Questionnaire Survey ................................................................................. 38
Appendix B ............................................................................................................. 39
A Interview Guide .......................................................................................... 39
* Patrick Balazo is a Killam Scholar, recipient of the Canada Graduate Scholarship to Honour
Nelson Mandela, and holds a Master of Arts in International Development Studies from
Dalhousie University. An early career professional, Patrick has previously worked with the
Canadian Centre on Statelessness and the Statelessness Network Asia Pacific. He can be
reached at Patrick.Balazo@Dal.ca.
2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(1)
INTRODUCTION
With the introduction of the Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act
No 35 by the Sri Lankan parliament in October 2003, Sri Lanka’s long stateless
Up-Country Tamil population was granted citizenship en masse. 1 Nevertheless,
many in this community feel as though the acquisition of citizenship has been of
little benefit given that enduring marginalisation and discrimination coalesce to
preclude them from claiming the rights of citizenship pertaining to healthcare,
education, employment and political participation. 2
In view of the above and based on field research conducted in Sri Lanka’s
Central and Uva provinces to determine whether the acquisition of citizenship has
provided for increased access and entitlement to four basic rights: healthcare,
education, employment and political participation. This paper argues that for some
previously stateless persons, recently acquired Sri Lankan citizenship is largely
nominal, operating to mask the continued marginalisation of this population and
deflect attention from an enduring human rights deficit believed to have been
resolved. In so doing, this paper challenges the notion that statelessness ‘can be
resolved in a single moment’, 3 and establishes that declarations of Sri Lanka’s
success in ending statelessness were made in haste.
To expand the scope of this paper, and place it within context of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (‘UNHCR’) ongoing #IBELONG
Campaign to end statelessness by 2024, the field research also attempted to
determine whether the acquisition of citizenship has provided previously stateless
persons with an increased sense of belonging. With respect to Campaign content,
the Campaign’s inaugural report states that ‘stateless people want nothing more
than to come in from the cold — to belong’. 4 Yet, the legal resolution of
statelessness may or may not translate into that which the stateless desire most —
belonging — and it is the chasm between citizenship and belonging, or rather, the
assumption that the former necessarily entails the latter, that this Campaign has
left unaddressed. For this reason, the findings herein are used to assess whether
citizenship has indeed provided previously stateless persons with an increased
sense of belonging, and are instructive for the global #IBELONG Campaign to end
statelessness by 2024.
This research is important for a number of reasons. First, it highlights the
ongoing discrimination perpetrated on Sri Lanka’s previously stateless Up-
Country Tamils in terms of access and entitlement to healthcare, education,
1 P P Sivapragasam, ‘From Statelessness to Citizenship: Up-Country Tamils in Sri Lanka’ in

Brad K Blitz and Maureen Lynch (eds), Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study
on the Benefits of Nationality (Edward Elgar 2011); Rebecca Wolozin, ‘Citizenship Issues
and Issuing Citizenship: A Case Study of Sri Lanka's Citizenship Laws in a Global Context’
(2014) 16(1) Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal 1; Mythri Jegathesan, ‘Deficient Realities:
Expertise and Uncertainty among Tea Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka’ (2015) 39(3)
Dialectical Anthropology 255; Christopher Neubert, ‘Power, Everyday Control, and
Emerging Resistance in Sri Lanka’s Plantations’ (2015) 24(4) Contemporary South Asia 360;
Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, ‘Ordeal of Citizenship: The Up-Country Tamils in Sri Lanka
and India’ in Paula Banerjee, Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury and Atig Ghosh (eds), The State
of Being Stateless: An Account of South Asia (Orient Blackswan 2016).
2 Sivapragasam (n 1); Wolozin (n 1); Jegathesan (n 1); Chaudhury (n 1).
3 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Special Report: Ending Statelessness
(Special Report, 4 November 2014) 20 <https://www.unhcr.org/cgi-
bin/texis/vtx/home/opendocPDFViewer.html?docid=546217229&query=Special%20Report
:%20Ending%20Statelessness%20Within%2010%20Years> (‘UNHCR Special Report’).
4 ibid 16.
6
Better Must Come
employment and political participation. In so doing, it establishes that the

acquisition of citizenship does not necessarily provide the previously stateless
with the benefits that formal recognition from the state is assumed to provide. With
an eye to Sri Lanka specifically, this paper challenges the reigning narrative of
ending statelessness in Sri Lanka as a tale of success. Of equal importance, on 4
November 2014, the UNHCR launched the ten-year global campaign to end
statelessness, an issue that, according to the UNHCR, ‘can be resolved in a single
moment’. 5 This paper tempers this claim and contributes a measure of nuance to
the broader discussion of bringing about this phenomenon’s global resolution by
establishing that there continues to exist a human rights deficit that ought to have
been resolved through the acquisition of citizenship. As well, because the literature
on how previously stateless groups view the acquisition of citizenship has yet to
be fully developed, this paper contributes to a growing body of work that can be
used to inform the broader global strategy devised to resolve statelessness. Finally,
it is important to evaluate if or how citizenship has improved the lives of the
previously stateless insofar as the #IBELONG Campaign risks delivering some 10
million 6 previously stateless persons further into the shadows upon the receipt of
citizenship when the act of conferment is celebrated and memorialised at the expense
of true substantive change.
This paper is structured as follows: the remainder of Part One outlines the
conceptual framework, the UNHCR #IBELONG Campaign, and the methods
used. With respect to the conceptual framework, the theory of liberal citizenship
as advanced by Thomas Humphrey Marshall, whereby the struggle to attain
individual rights is recognised as a core component of citizenship, is extended by
the work of Ruth Lister and Evalina Dagnino to reimagine citizenship as struggle.
To better establish theorizing citizenship as struggle, and thus restore agency to
previously stateless persons who struggle to not only gain new rights, but give
substance to those rights that have already been secured, the concept of dissensus
as developed by French philosopher Jacques Rancière is explored and adopted to
buttress the theory of citizenship used in this paper. Part II provides an overview
of the historical experience of Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population from the
nineteenth century forward. Part III provides an explanation of why access to
healthcare, education, employment and political participation among Sri Lanka’s
Up-Country Tamil population comprise the focus of this study, and presents with
analysis the aggregate findings of the questionnaire surveys and interviews
conducted to determine whether the acquisition of citizenship has provided for
increased access and entitlement to healthcare, education, employment and
political participation. Part IV provides a discussion of the major themes that arise
out of said findings and analysis. Part V examines the major themes identified,
draws a tentative conclusion from this research and what it can tell us about other
previously stateless groups and ending statelessness generally, and makes a call
for comparative research that can better grasp the situation of previously stateless
persons beyond one context.
A Conceptual Framework
The object of analysis animating this study is the previously stateless person, that
is, the stateless person who has acquired citizenship in a given state and is
5 ibid 20.
6 ibid.
7
henceforth recognised as a citizen of that state, thereby remedying for one that
predicament confronting all stateless persons alike: the absence of any legal
identity to which no formal recognition by any state is owed. For this reason, it is
citizenship, meaning the ‘passive and active membership of individuals in a
nation-state with universalistic rights and obligations at a specified level of
equality’ 7 that serves as the core concept in this study’s conceptual framework.
Still, citizenship is an all too vast concept encompassing no less than twenty
distinct theoretical approaches, 8 such that ‘the scope of this field now certainly
goes well beyond the mastery of any scholar’. 9 However, because this study seeks
to explore the degree to which the previously stateless person, or individual, has
access to four specific rights, and given that ‘liberal theory, whether of citizenship
or of anything else, begins with the individual’, 10 a liberal theory of citizenship
has been adopted.
Even so, a theory of citizenship that champions liberal individual rights remains
incomplete, for liberal theory views rights as guaranteed by the state and allocated
to those under its authority wherein they are passively enjoyed by those fortunate
enough to have been brought within the state’s fold. 11 In this way, rights are
bestowed upon individuals from on high, with the individual portrayed as a passive
recipient of rights as opposed to an active political agent engaged in the political
process. Yet, as Marshall reminds us, citizenship ‘is stimulated both by the
struggle to win those rights and by their enjoyment when won’. 12 It is the first half
of this statement that is instructive, for Marshall acknowledges that citizenship
rights are also secured from below through the struggle for their attainment, 13 and
in so doing tacitly suggests that these rights are not entirely the product of state
beneficence but can result from citizen engagement. In contributing to the notion
of struggle advanced by Marshall, 14 Lister states that the content of citizenship
rights is never fixed but remains the object of political struggle, and that as an
ideal, ‘citizenship provides a potent weapon in the hands of disadvantaged and
oppressed groups of insiders’ to not only gain new rights, but give substance to
those rights that have already been secured. 15 Thus, citizenship can also be
conceived of as struggle, as a site of contestation or negotiation, as ‘the invention
and creation of new rights, which emerge from specific struggles and their
concrete practices’ 16 given that those excluded from their entitlement to the rights
7 Thomas Janoski and Brian Gran, ‘Political Citizenship: Foundation of Rights’ in Engin Fahri
Isin and Bryan S Turner (eds), Handbook of Citizenship Studies (Sage 2002) 13.
8 Engin Fahri Isin and Bryan S Turner, Handbook of Citizenship Studies (Sage 2002); Margaret
R Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights
(Cambridge University Press 2008).
9 Isin and Turner (n 8) 2.
10 Peter H Schuck, ‘Liberal Citizenship’ in Engin Fahri Isin and Bryan S Turner (eds), Handbook
of Citizenship Studies (Sage 2002) 132.
11 Michael Walzer, ‘Citizenship’ in Terence Ball, James Farr and Russel L Hanson (eds),
Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge University Press 1989); Keith
Faulks, Citizenship (Routledge 2000); Isin and Turner (n 8).
12 Thomas Humphrey Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays (Cambridge
University Press 1950) 41.
13 ibid.
14 ibid.
15 Ruth Lister, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (New York University Press 2003) 5.
16 Evalina Dagnino, ‘Culture, Citizenship and Democracy: Changing Discourses and Practices
of the Latin American Left’ in Sonia E Alvarez, Evalina Dagnino and Arturo Escobar (eds),
Cultures of Politics, Politics of Cultures: Re-Visioning Latin American Social Movements
(Westview Press 1998) 50 (emphasis altered).
8
Better Must Come
they are guaranteed by virtue of their citizenship organise and mobilise to demand
the rights they are entitled to. 17 Of course, in no struggle is victory assured, and
each struggle will be shaped by its respective cultural, political and historical
context, 18 but conceiving of citizenship as struggle completes this gap in liberal
theory and does so without displacing the purchase of individual rights.
To better establish theorising citizenship as struggle, and thus restore agency
to previously stateless persons who struggle to not only gain new rights, but give
substance to those rights that have already been secured, the concept of dissensus
as developed by French philosopher Jacques Rancière is adopted to buttress the
theory of citizenship used in this study. By dissensus, Rancière means ‘a division
put in the “common sense”: a dispute about what is given, about the frame within
which we see something as given’. 19 As Rancière argues, rights can be said to
belong to individuals ‘when they can do something with them to construct a
dissensus against the denial of rights they suffer’, that is, to dispute the social
consensus that sees one’s rights denied. 20 This means that there is no binary of
having rights and not having rights whereby individuals passively accept whether
their rights are observed or not, but that individuals secure the rights that are theirs
through their struggle to first show that they have been denied the very rights they
are owed, whereupon those same rights that have been denied are then enacted
once secured. However, this is only possible if, as Rancière suggests, we move
beyond viewing rights as being possessed by a definite subject. 21
According to Rancière, 22 ‘the subject of rights is the… process of
subjectivisation, that bridges the interval between two forms of the existence of
those rights’. The first form is written rights; the ‘inscriptions of the community
as free and equal’. 23 The second form are ‘the rights of those who make something
of that inscription, who decide not only to “use” their rights but also to build such
and such a case for the verification of the power of the inscription’. 24 However, it
must be noted that the inscription affords moral justification for the subject to seek
verification, for the mere existence of the inscription allows the subject to assume
equality as she proceeds. Though the construction of a dissensus against the denial
of rights may be met with charges of recalcitrance, the subject is in fact proceeding
‘from the point of view of equality, asserting equality, assuming equality as a
given, working out from equality, trying to see how productive it can be and thus
maximizing all possible liberty and equality’ 25 when disputing the given so as to
verify the power of the inscription. In this way, the subject of rights is not a definite
17 Marshall (n 12); Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt Brace & Company
1973); Walzer (n 11); Naila Kabeer, Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings & Expressions (Zed
Books 2004); Celestine Nyamu-Musembi, ‘Towards an Actor-Oriented Perspective on
Human Rights’ in Naila Kabeer (ed), Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings & Expressions (Zed
Books 2004); Margaret Walton-Roberts, ‘Conclusion: Slipper Citizenship and Retrenching
Rights’ in Rhoda E Howard-Hassman and Margaret Walton-Roberts (eds), The Human Right
to Citizenship: A Slippery Concept (University of Pennsylvania Press 2015).
18 Jack M Barbalet, Citizenship: Rights, Struggle, and Class Inequality (University of Minnesota
Press 1988); Lister (n 15).
19 Jacques Rancière, ‘Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’ (2004) 103(1–2) The South
Atlantic Quarterly 297.
20 ibid 305–6.
21 ibid.
22 ibid 302.
23 ibid 302.
24 ibid 303.
25 Jacques Rancière, On the Shores of Politics (Verso 1995) 51–52.
9
rights holder but the actor who inhabits the interstitial field of contestation created
by pitting the inscription of rights against the awaited verification of said rights as
premised on equality. If the rights that are under contestation are not verified, it
shall be established that the subject in question does not have the rights she has,
thereby evincing ‘the contradictions of a social order which presupposes equality
but simultaneously disavows it’. 26 Conversely, the verification of said rights shall
establish that the subject has the rights she has not, whereby dissensus sees the
prevailing social consensus — the given — reimagined to include as free and equal
the once excluded, with the rights that were heretofore denied now free to be
claimed and enacted.
In sum, dissensus is a conceptual tool that can be deployed to intervene ‘into
always particular situations, specific instances in which ideas are “at work”’ 27 to
restore agency to disadvantaged and oppressed groups of insiders who struggle to
have their rights respected, protected and fulfilled. For this very reason, dissensus
can be applied to all manner of social settings marked by tension, for it is a
conceptual tool that is necessarily malleable, and when harnessed accordingly, can
be attuned to both account for and yield to the specificities of a given context,
including that of Up-Country Sri Lanka.
The third component of the conceptual framework used in this study is a human
rights analysis grounded in the notions of access and entitlement given that such
an analysis reveals if this population’s rights to healthcare, education, employment
and political participation are fulfilled, and if certain segments of this population
are better able to secure the rights they have been guaranteed more so than others.
This allows for an assessment of whether recently ordained citizens have either
access or entitlement to the human rights that are said to be theirs by virtue of their
citizenship, it reveals who among this population has secured said access or
entitlement, and allows those incapable of seizing their rights to emerge in the
analysis. A normative understanding of human rights is henceforth adopted
because it is the concept of human rights that animates discussions and appraisals
of injustice at the international scale, and for which an expansive body of
international law has been developed. Further, Sri Lanka’s membership in the
United Nations is enough to warrant an investigation of their human rights
practices by contrasting how things are with how they ought to be.
B The UNHCR #IBELONG Campaign
In summary, the #IBELONG Campaign aims to ‘resolve existing situations of

statelessness, prevent new cases of statelessness from emerging, and better
identify and protect stateless persons’ by 2024. 28 To this end, a Global Action Plan
has been designed to meet this goal, and is comprised of 10 key ‘Actions’: resolve
existing major situations of statelessness; ensure no child is born stateless; remove
gender discrimination from nationality laws; prevent denial, loss or deprivation of
nationality on discriminatory grounds; prevent statelessness in cases of state
succession; grant protection status to stateless migrants and facilitate their
26 Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (Continuum 2010) 9.

27 Rancière, ‘Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’ (n 19); Paul Bowman and Richard
Stamp, Reading Rancière: Critical Dissensus (Continuum 2011) xii.
28 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Action Plan to End Statelessness
(Special Report, 4 November 2014) <https://www.unhcr.org/en-
au/protection/statelessness/54621bf49/global-action-plan-end-statelessness-2014-
2024.html> (‘Global Action Plan’).
10
Better Must Come
naturalisation; ensure birth registration for the prevention of statelessness; issue

nationality documentation to those with entitlement to it; accede to the UN
Statelessness Conventions; 29 and improve quantitative and qualitative data on
stateless populations. 30 Not only are these ‘Actions’ guided by an eight-part
overall strategy, each Action has milestones to be reached by 2017 and 2020, and
an ultimate goal to be met by 2024. In support of these measures, the UNHCR’s
budget for resolving statelessness was quintupled between 2009 and 2014, a
special mechanism was created to provide increased funding for particularly
promising and important projects and more than 20 specialists have been deployed
globally to work with governments and relevant organisations to address this
issue. 31 To accomplish the Actions, countries are encouraged to develop and
implement National Action Plans that ‘set out detailed strategies to complete
selected Actions and indicate detailed country-level goals and milestones’, with
progress on these Plans assessed by the UNHCR in two-year intervals. 32 The
Campaign is further complemented by quarterly Campaign updates, a series of
‘Good Practices Papers’ to aid governments, civil society, the UNHCR and other
international organisations implement the Global Action Plan, and an Open Letter
to End Statelessness on the Campaign’s website. 33 With respect to Campaign
content, the Campaign’s inaugural report states that ‘stateless people want nothing
more than to come in from the cold — to belong’, 34 and although ‘it is unclear
how many of the humanitarian emergencies [the UNHCR is] working in today can
be resolved in the near future’, 35 the Campaign is guided by the belief that
statelessness can be resolved for at least 10 million people who are currently
without a nationality within 10 years. In fact, the #IBELONG Campaign claims
that statelessness ‘can be resolved in a single moment’. 36 Yet, the legal resolution
of statelessness may or may not translate into that which the stateless desire most
— belonging — and it is the chasm between citizenship and belonging, or rather,
the assumption that the former necessarily entails the latter, that this Campaign
has left unaddressed.
Recent events in Sri Lanka present a unique opportunity to appraise citizenship
and belonging after statelessness, for the 2003 Grant of Citizenship to Persons of
Indian Origin Act No 35 and the subsequent Grant of Citizenship to Persons of
Indian Origin (Amendment) Act No 6 of 2009 saw the country’s long stateless Up-
Country Tamil population acquire citizenship en masse. 37 Not unlike the optimism
expressed in the #IBELONG Campaign, these developments have been hailed as
29 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, opened for signature 28 September
1954, 360 UNTS 117 (entered into force 6 June 1960); Convention on the Reduction of
Statelessness, opened for signature 30 August 1961, 989 UNTS 175 (entered into force 13
December 1975).
30 Global Action Plan (n 28).
31 ibid
32 ibid 26.
33 ibid; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The Campaign to End Statelessness,
January 2015 Update (Campaign Report, January 2015)
<https://www.refworld.org/docid/54cb79b04.html> (‘2015 Campaign Update’); United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘IBELONG’ (Webpage)
<http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/>.
34 UNHCR Special Report (n 3) 16.
35 2015 Campaign Update (n 33) 3.
37 Yogeswary Vijayapalan, Endless Inequality: The Rights of the Plantation Tamils in Sri Lanka
(Ohm Books 2014).
11
a success, and Sri Lanka has been heralded as a shining example of what it means
to end statelessness. 38 However, before any interrogation of citizenship and
belonging after statelessness can be pursued, an explanation of the methods used
in this study along with an understanding of the Sri Lankan context is in order.
C Methods
Four plantations were visited for the purpose of this study, two of which were
urban (Nanu Oya and Nuwara Eliya) and another two rural (Passara and Dickoya).
The urban plantations were within the immediate proximity of an urban centre,
while rural plantations were located at least forty-five minutes by transport to the
closest urban centre. The decision to visit these four plantations was largely
informed by the author’s local research team in Sri Lanka given that the research
team had already established working relationships with both plantation
management and the communities living on these plantations. Still, the author
ensured that two urban and two rural plantations were visited to gauge if or how
geography impacts the substance of citizenship. To ensure gender balance, the
number of female and male participants was pre-determined. Because plantation
populations are relatively homogenous and geographically concentrated,
participants were selected at random. 39 Prospective participants were approached
by the author and the research assistant during their break time, when randomly
encountered while walking through plantation grounds, and in the shared public
spaces adjacent to plantation living quarters and asked if they wished to participate
in this study. To secure the verbal consent of each participant, each prospective
participant was read a consent form prior partaking in this study. As well, each
participant was provided a written, Tamil language copy of the questions they
were asked. The names the plantations visited have been altered to protect the
identity of all who have agreed to partake in this study.
In sum, semi-structured interviews, 40 questionnaire surveys 41 and a human
rights analysis constitute the research methods used in this study. Semi-structured
interviews were chosen to ensure that I adhered to the interview schedule devised,
to make certain that the issue of access and entitlement to the four rights
(healthcare, education, employment, political participation) that constitute the
focus of this study were addressed, and to provide interviewees with the freedom
to develop and voice their own thoughts and concerns about such matters. 42 As
well, this approach enabled me to tailor questions to the interviewee and provide
me with the freedom to move on to other questions if it appeared that the
interviewee was uncomfortable with particular subject matter, or when a question
38 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Citizenship for All, Focus on Protection
(Report, 2004); Sulakshani Perera, ‘Sri Lankan Success Story’ (2007) 147 Refugees Magazine
20; Chetani Priyanga Wijetunga, ‘Feature: Sri Lanka Makes Citizens out of Stateless Tea
Pickers’, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (online, 7 October 2004)
<http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2004/10/416564cd4/feature-sri-lanka-makes-citizens-
stateless-tea-pickers.html>; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Good
Practices Paper — Action 1: Resolving Existing Major Situations of Statelessness (Good
Practice Paper, 23 February 2015) <http://www.refworld.org/docid/54e75a244.html>.
39 David Simon, ‘Your Questions Answered? Conducting Questionnaire Surveys’ in Vandana
Desai and Robert B Potter (eds), Doing Development (Sage 2006) 163, 169.
40 See Appendix A.
41 See Appendix B.
42 Katie Willis, ‘Interviewing’ in Vandana Desai and Robert B Potter (eds), Doing Development
(Sage 2006) 144.
12
Better Must Come
had been rendered redundant based on previous responses. 43 The interviewees

selected for this study were fifteen women and fifteen men, all of whom identified
as Up-Country Tamil.
Structured questionnaire surveys, consisting of seven straightforward ‘yes, no,
no change’ questions designed to gauge whether people personally believed that
access and entitlement to the four human rights indicators used in this study had
increased since 2003 were conducted in each location to ascertain a more
expansive range of statistical information from a representative sample of this
population. The choice to proceed with such a limited line of questioning was
made in order to capture the experiences of as many people as possible within a
limited period of inquiry. The questionnaire survey respondents selected for this
study were fifty women and fifty men, all of whom identified as Up-Country
Tamil. The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was deployed so
as to put a human face on the statistics generated by the structured questionnaire
surveys. Lastly, to overcome any language barrier between myself and those that
had agreed to partake, I was accompanied by a research assistant fluent in both
Tamil and English when conducting these interviews and surveys, all of which
were undertaken between 25 July and 25 August 2016.
The human rights analysis was employed to analyse the data generated from
the above research methods for the purpose of identifying the extent to which
access and entitlement to the four human rights that constitute the focus of this
study had increased, and whether particular segments of this population had an
increased rights entitlement in the years following the acquisition of citizenship as
compared with others. Beyond these methods, a mix of primary documents,
secondary research sources, and news media provided the data needed to complete
this project.
THE UP-COUNTRY TAMILS AND SRI LANKA — A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
A The Colonial Period
With the 25 March 1802 Treaty of Amiens, 44 Ceylon was confirmed as a British
Crown colony. 45 The 1823 Colebrook-Cameron Commission enacted by the
Colonial Government put forth a number of recommendations pertaining to the
administration of the island, and with the establishment of the first Legislative
Council in 1833 a unitary state structure had been emplaced. 46 Mirroring these
developments was the view from the Colonial Office that the large-scale
cultivation of commercial crops presented as ‘an important option for Ceylon’, 47
and plantation agriculture was soon introduced to the island’s central region. 48 The
43 ibid 146.
44 For purposes of historical accuracy, Ceylon will henceforth be used when speaking of the pre-
1972 period, whereas Sri Lanka will be used when speaking of the post-1972 period after the
country’s name had been officially changed from Ceylon to Sri Lanka.
45 Vijayapalan, Endless Inequality (n 37).
46 Valli Kanapathipillai, Citizenship and Statelessness in Sri Lanka: The Case of the Tamil
Estate Workers (Anthem Press 2009); Vijayapalan (n 37).
47 Kumari Jayarwardena and Rachel Kurian, Class, Patriarchy and Ethnicity on Sri Lankan
Plantations: Two Centuries of Power and Protest (Orient Blackswan 2015) 18.
48 Yvonne Fries and Thomas Bibin, The Undesirables: The Expatriation of the Tamil People ‘of
Recent Indian Origin’ from the Plantations in Sri Lanka to India (K P Bagchi & Company
1984); Sivapragasam (n 1).
13
growing of coffee in Ceylon for export had been experimented with as early as
1824, and due to a decline in the export of West Indian coffee to Britain resulting
from the 1833 abolition of slavery in the colonies along with a reduction on the
duty on Ceylon coffee in 1835, 49 the potential promise of commercial coffee
production was pursued by British planters with alacrity. Having reached record
exports exceeding 50,802,345 kilograms per year by 1870, 50 king coffee had
assumed the throne of plantation agriculture in Ceylon by the mid-nineteenth
century.
Many authors state that planters responded to this demand by first employing
indigenous Sinhala labour. 51 However, the spread of plantation agriculture is
believed to have done little to interrupt land ties among the Sinhala peasantry, for
traditional economic activities were preferred over the harsh labour regimes
encountered on plantations. 52 The failure to secure Sinhala labour prompted
planters to look to southern India, specifically what was then known as the Madras
Presidency and now as the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, to recruit the requisite
labour supply. 53 The systematic recruitment of labour is said to have begun in
1839, 54 and various population figures chronicling the nineteenth century increase
of the Up-Country Tamil population are provided in the literature. 55 Further, there
is near-consensus in the literature that migration was circular until hemileia
vastatrix devastated the island’s coffee plantations in the 1880s, 56 causing planters
to pursue the commercial cultivation of tea which required a resident rather than
seasonal labour force. 57
Yet, as Patrick Peebles argues, misrepresentation and inaccuracy plague the
conventional historical account presented above. 58 First, Peebles states ‘that there
is little evidence that planters attempted and failed to hire a Sinhalese plantation
labour force’, and that ‘[i]t is only after a homogeneously Tamil labour force
emerged that planters emphasised the unsuitability of the Sinhalese for plantation
work’. 59 Further, 1839 is the year the Government of Ceylon began counting the
number of travellers moving between India and Ceylon, not the year that
recruitment began. In fact, the recruitment in India of labour was outlawed
between 1839 and 1847, meaning that the plantation labour force created in the
1830s and 1840s was comprised of Tamil labourers already in Ceylon who had
relocated of their own volition, not to mention that ‘the presence of people of south
49 S Nadesan, A History of the Up-Country Tamil People in Sri Lanka (Ranco 1993) 17.
50 S Rajaratnam, ‘The Growth of Plantation Agriculture in Ceylon, 1886–1931’ (1961) 4(1)
Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 1.
51 S M Thomas, A History of the Tamil Church Mission: A Centenary Volume 1854–1953
(Mortlake 1954); M W Roberts, ‘Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon During the Coffee Period,
(1830–1880)’ (1966) 3(2) The Indian Economic & Social History Review 101; Fries and Bibin
(n 48); Nadesan (n 49); Kanapathipillai (n 46); A P Kanapathypillai, The Epic of Tea: Politics
in the Plantations of Sri Lanka (Social Scientists’ Association 2011); Jayarwardena and
Kurian (n 47).
52 Kanapathipillai (n 46); Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47).
53 Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47).
54 Nadesan (n 49); Sivapragasam (n 1); Vijayapalan (n 37).
55 Fries and Bibin (n 48); Kanapathypillai (n 46); A Lawrence, Malayaha Tamils, Power Sharing
and Local Democracy in Sri Lanka (Social Scientists’ Association 2011); Vijayapalan (n 37).
56 Vijayapalan (n 37).
57 Roberts (n 51); Fries and Bibin (n 48); Nadesan (n 49); Kanapathipillai (n 46);
Kanapathypillai (n 51); Lawrence (n 55); Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47).
58 Patrick Peebles, The Plantation Tamils of Ceylon (Leicester University Press 2001).
59 ibid 30.
14
Better Must Come
Indian origin is a continuous feature of the island’s history’ 60 and not a mid-
nineteenth century aberration. Second, attempts to quantify the nineteenth century
population of what would one day be the Up-Country Tamil community are
largely fruitless, for not only did the actual number of labourers go unrecorded
until 1868, the available population figures have been determined by analysing net
passenger traffic between India and Ceylon. Lastly, as both Peebles and Daniel
Bass argue, 61 the rapid expansion and scale of Ceylon’s coffee plantations before
1885, and the attendant maintenance thereof, would have required a permanent
labour force during the coffee era, suggesting that this community was resident
long before the final decades of the nineteenth century. Ultimately, Peebles work
demonstrates that there was a resident (Up-Country) Tamil population in Ceylon’s
central region from at least the 1830s onward, that calls of how many or how few
of these people were resident are altogether trivial and that the charge of
circulatory migration denies the nineteenth century presence in Ceylon of this
community and serves only to emphasise their collective foreignness. 62
Nevertheless, the nineteenth century was a period of intermittent drought,
famine, debt, landlessness and increasing population pressures in the Madras
Presidency whereby peasants had little option but to choose between debt bondage
and starvation in Madras or work on Ceylon’s coffee or tea plantations to survive,
inducing many to relocate to Ceylon either independently or through
recruitment. 63
The harsh labour regimes that awaited the Up-Country Tamil labour force,
coupled with the deployment of surveillance, soft social mechanisms, legal and
extra-legal and economic and extra-economic coercion 64 on the part of planters
gave rise to a method of labour control on Ceylonese plantations, not unlike that
of the earlier slave plantations of the New World. 65 These methods of labour
control also meant that the Up-Country Tamil experience as one of captive labour
on enclave-like tea estates had crystallised before the dawn of the twentieth
century.
60 ibid 24.
61 ibid; Daniel Bass, Everyday Ethnicity in Sri Lanka: Up-Country Tamil Identity Politics
(Social Scientists’ Association 2015).
62 Peebles (n 58).
63 Roberts (n 51); Nadesan (n 49); Vijayapalan (n 37); Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47).
64 Soft social mechanisms included the caste hierarchy quickly established on plantations,
whereby the kangany (Tamil word for supervisor) was of a higher caste than the labourers,
and thus able to wield undue power and control over the labour force. Legal and extra-legal
coercion included the Service Contracts Ordinance No 5 of 1841 and the Master and Servants
Ordinance No 11 of 1865 which together criminalised a leave of employment short of one
month’s notice or without reasonable cause, drunkenness, disobedience, insolence and other
misconduct however loosely defined. Also, the Tundu system employed on plantations until
1921 which required workers to obtain a discharge ticket from their employer before they
could either leave the plantation or seek employment on another plantation falls within the
scope of extra-legal coercion. Economic and extra-economic coercion includes the advances
that planters gave to kanganies to cover the travel expenses of the labourers they recruited
from southern India, which were then incurred by individual labourers meaning that each
labourer began work life on a plantation deeply indebted to his or her kangany. As well, the
authority of the kangany over the workers and his role of overseeing all the financial affairs
of his labour gang gave rise to an epidemic of arrears in wages, non-payment, fraud and
extortion, all of which falls within the scope of extra-economic coercion.
65 N Shanmugaratnam, Privatisation of Tea Plantations: The Challenge of Reforming
Production Relations in Sri Lanka, an Institutional Historical Perspective (Social Scientists’
Association 1997); Peebles (n 58); Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47).
15
B After Independence
On 4 February 1948, roughly a century after the population that would come to be
known as the Up-Country Tamils had emerged in Ceylon, an independent Ceylon
came into being. 66 Three years prior in talks between the country’s future Prime
Minister Dudley Shelton Senanayake and the British government, it had been
agreed that the question of citizenship would be determined by the government of
an independent Ceylon, 67 and on 15 November 1948 the Citizenship Act No 18
(‘1948 Act’) was enacted. 68 Although the colonial era Soulbury Constitution had
stipulated ‘that no law could be enacted, that was discriminatory to one
community, or that is not applicable to other communities’, 69 the 1948 Act targeted
exclusively the Up-Country Tamil community insofar as citizenship by descent
was automatically granted to the country’s Sinhala, Ceylon Tamil, Ceylon Moor,
Burgher and Malay communities while Up-Country Tamils were required to prove
descent. 70 Specifically, citizenship by descent would be conferred if one could
prove that his or her father, or paternal grandfather and great-grandfather had been
born in Ceylon, yet birth registration had only been undertaken as of 1895 meaning
that only few persons in Ceylon could provide their father’s birth certificate, let
alone that of their grandfather or great-grandfather. 71 Failing this, citizenship by
registration could be sought, though the costs involved, coupled with the need for
proficiency in English and Sinhala to complete the process, made this a
burdensome if not unrealistic option for a largely impoverished and illiterate
demographic. 72 In all, approximately 800,000 Up-Country Tamils were denied
citizenship under the operation of this Act. 73
Several attempts to resolve the issue of statelessness were pursued in both the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and are listed here in chronological order: the
Indo–Ceylon Agreement of 1954 (Nehru–Kotelawala Pact); 74 the Indo–Ceylon
Agreement of 1964 (Sirima–Shastri Pact); 75 the Indo–Ceylon Agreement of
1974; 76 the Grant of Citizenship to Stateless Persons 1986; 77 and the Grant of
Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act of 2003. 78
By 2003, there remained a population of 84,000 persons plus their natural
increase, who were legally resident in Sri Lanka but without the rights accrued to
a citizen of Sri Lanka. 79 This de facto stateless Up-Country Tamil population
prompted Parliament to enact the Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin
66 Ishtiaq Ahmed, State, Nation and Ethnicity in Contemporary South Asia (Pinter 1996).
67 Kanapathypillai (n 51).
69 P P Devaraj, ‘From Exclusion to Incorporation: Tangled & Torturous Experiences of the
Indian Origin Tamils’ in Gnana Moonesinghe (ed), Challenges for Nation Building: Priorities
for Sustainability and Inclusivity (Shramaya 2010) 101.
70 Fries and Bibin (n 48); Lawrence (n 55); Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47).
72 Fries and Bibin (n 47); Vijayapalan (n 37).
74 Indo–Ceylon Agreement (Nehru–Kotelawala Pact), India–Sri Lanka, signed 18 January 1954.
75 Indo–Ceylon Agreement (Sirima–Shastri Pact), India–Sri Lanka, signed 30 October 1964.
76 Indo–Ceylon Agreement, India–Sri Lanka, signed 28 June 1974.
77 Grant of Citizenship to Stateless Persons Act, No 5 of 1986, 21 February 1987 (Sri Lanka).
78 Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act of 2003, 23 September 2003, Bill No
153 (Sri Lanka).
16
Better Must Come
Act No 35 on 11 November 2003 to extend citizenship to this very group. 80 Even

so, some six years on there remained a resident de facto stateless population, so an
18 February 2009 amendment was enacted providing for citizenship to be acquired
by operation of law, and with that the issue of statelessness among the Up-Country
Tamils of Sri Lanka had been brought to a close. 81 Though the acquisition of
citizenship did not necessarily remedy the many rights deficits akin to being
stateless, and while it would be absurd to in any way condemn this landmark
development, caution must guide any celebration of these matters.
FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
In the following Part, an explanation of why the four human rights explored in this
study: the right to healthcare, education, employment and political participation is
provided. Second, the aggregate findings of the questionnaire surveys and
interviews conducted to determine whether the acquisition of citizenship among
Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population has brought with it substantive benefits
by way of increased access and entitlement to healthcare, education, employment
and political participation are presented. Following from this, a brief discussion of
belonging is provided and the findings of the few questions designed to capture
whether those who partook in this study conceive of themselves as belonging to
Sri Lanka are presented. By providing evidence that some previously stateless
persons are still yet ‘to come in from the cold — to belong’, 82 the findings
presented below challenge the reigning narrative of ending statelessness in Sri
Lanka as a tale of success and are instructive for the global #IBELONG Campaign
to end statelessness by 2024.
A Four Human Rights: Healthcare, Education, Employment and Political

Participation
The four human rights that constitute the focus of this study — the rights to
healthcare, education, employment and political participation — were chosen for
a number of reasons. To begin, in core #IBELONG Campaign content, an inability
to access healthcare, education and employment is repeatedly identified as the
foremost reason as to why statelessness is a global human rights concern. 83 Such
emphasis is reason enough to focus on these three rights. Yet when we look to Sri
Lanka’s previously stateless Up-Country Tamil population, we quickly learn that
healthcare and education have long been provided by plantation ownership, not to
mention that labour on the country’s many tea plantationscharacterises this
population’s collective experience. Though this may suggest that there is no
reason to explore access to healthcare, education and employment in the wake of
citizenship, when placed in context, such access becomes of immediate concern.
80 ibid.
81 ibid.
83 ibid; Global Action Plan (n 28); United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, I Am Here,
I Belong: The Urgent Need to End Childhood Statelessness (Report, 3 November 2015)
<https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wp-content/uploads/2015-10-StatelessReport_ENG15-
web.pdf>; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘This is Our Home’: Stateless
Minorities and their Search for Citizenship (Report, 3 November 2017)
<https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wp-
content/uploads/UNHCR_EN2_2017IBELONG_Report_ePub.pdf>.
17
As compared with all other demographic groups, it is Sri Lanka’s Up-Country

Tamil population that registers the poorest health outcomes. 84 However, this state
of affairs is largely the result of this population having to rely on healthcare
provided by one’s respective estate, that is, healthcare provided by the private, for-
profit tea plantation that one happens to either work for or reside within. Of
particular note, this medical scheme is not integrated into the national health
system, and because of this inferior healthcare services prevail. 85 The medical care
that is available on estates is provided by Estate Medical Assistants employed by
plantation management who often have no medical training. 86
Similarly, as compared with all other demographic groups, it is again Sri
Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population that registers the poorest educational
outcomes. 87 This situation is largely attributable to this population’s continued
reliance on estate schools, an arrangement unique to the Up-Country. Though
estate schools were brought under the purview of the national education system
between 1977 and 1980, 88 prior to which they were the responsibility of estate
management, many are characterised by the Ministry of Education as having a
lack of safe buildings, well-equipped classrooms and appropriate learning
materials. 89 Further, plantation areas are disadvantaged with respect to secondary
education, with 68.5 per cent of schools only offering primary instruction, and
where secondary education is available it is marked by an overall paucity of
teachers capable of teaching science and mathematics. 90
When compared with both the urban and rural sectors of the Sri Lankan labour
force, it is the estate sector that registers the highest labour force participation rate
at 63.1 per cent, whereas the urban and rural sectors register 48.6 and 54.4 per cent
respectively. 91 Moreover, it is the estate sector that again registers the highest
employment to population ratio at 60.9 per cent, with the urban and rural sectors
trailing at 46.4 and 51.8 per cent respectively. 92 Despite these figures, from the
years 1995–96 through to 2012, the estate sector has consistently registered the
highest poverty headcount in the Household Income and Expenditure Survey, and
when compared with all other demographic groups, it is the Up-Country Tamil
population that registers the smallest middle class at 10 per cent of its population,
with Sri Lanka’s Sinhala demographic leading at 22 per cent. 93 Further, according
84 United Nations Development Program, Sri Lanka Human Development Report 2012:
Bridging Regional Disparities for Human Development (Report, 2012)
<https://www.undp.org/content/dam/srilanka/docs/localpublications/Sri%20Lanka%20Hum
an%20Development%20Report%202012.pdf> (‘Sri Lanka Development Report 2012’).
85 Kanapathypillai (n 51); Lawrence (n 55).
86 Lawrence (n 55); Vijayapalan (n 37).
87 Sri Lanka Development Report 2012 (n 84).
88 Nadesan (n 49).
89 United Nations Children’s Fund Sri Lanka, Out-of-School Children in Sri Lanka: Country
Study (Report, February 2013) (‘Out-of-School Children in Sri Lanka’).
90 ibid; A S Chandrabose and P P Sivapragasam, Red Colour of Tea: Central Issues that Impact
the Tea Plantation Community in Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka: Human Development Organization
2011).
91 Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey Annual Report 2015
(Annual Report, 17 November 2016) 9.
92 ibid 20.
93 Department of Census and Statistics, Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2012/13
(Report, 21 March 2015) 42; Vagisha Gunasekara, Unpacking the Middle: A Class-based
Analysis of the Labour Market in Sri Lanka (Discussion Paper, February 2015) 10; World
Bank, Sri Lanka Poverty Assessment, Engendering Growth with Equity: Opportunities and
Challenges (Report, 23 January 2007).
18
Better Must Come
to the most recent Labour Force Surveys, it is the estate sector that has recorded
the lowest mean and median household income for the past two years running. 94
It is because many still rely on estate healthcare that is removed from the
national health system, estate schools mired in a history of neglect and readily
available though poorly remunerated plantation employment, that increased access
to government healthcare services, and educational and employment opportunities
beyond the estate must be investigated to determine whether the acquisition of
citizenship has brought with it substantive benefit in the post-2003 era.
As stated above, the #IBELONG Campaign tells us that that ‘stateless people
want nothing more than to come in from the cold — to belong’. 95 Immediately
following this statement, we are told that this ‘is often impossible’ 96 because
stateless people are ‘politically impotent’ 97 and as such cannot organise to affect
change. Exploring whether the acquisition of citizenship has remedied the
assumed political impotency of a previously stateless population, and the
implications this has for bringing the stateless in from the cold, is reason enough
to explore whether Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population do indeed have
increased access to the political process in the post-2003 era. However, it is
important to remember that prior to Ceylon’s independence from British rule,
some 100,000 Up-Country Tamils registered to vote in the 1931 State Council
elections, which elected two Up-Country Tamil representatives to the State
Council. 98 Five years later, some 145,000 Up-Country Tamil voters returned
another two Up-Country Tamil representatives to the State Council. 99 Building on
this momentum, in 1939 the Ceylon Indian Congress (later renamed the Ceylon
Workers’ Congress) was formed to protect the rights of Indians and those of Indian
descent in the country. 100 Unfortunately, this rising chorus of political
participation was altogether silenced by the citizenship and elections acts passed
in 1948 and 1949, and save the sporadic strike actions undertaken by plantation
labourers in the intervening years, Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population
remained effectively silenced until the issue of citizenship was resolved. It is
precisely because the Up-Country Tamil population constituted a consequential
political demographic that was silenced with the enactment of the 1948 Act that
increased access to political participation must be investigated to determine
whether the acquisition of citizenship has brought with it substantive benefit in the
post-2003 era. 101
1 Healthcare
Overall, the majority of questionnaire survey respondents indicated that access to

government healthcare services has improved since the 2003 grant of citizenship,
with a near equal representation of women and men again indicating that this was
94 As of 2019. See Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey Annual
Report — 2017 (Annual Report 2nd Version, 7 May 2019) 9.
96 ibid.
97 ibid.
98 Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47); Lawrence (n 55); Vijayapalan (n 37).
99 ibid.
101 See Questionnaire and Interview Findings.
19
so. 102 However, the lack of reported improvement is marginally more

commonplace in rural areas. 103
When asked whether access to government healthcare services beyond the
estate has improved since the 2003 grant of citizenship, the majority of
interviewees (27/30) indicated that access has improved, with a near equal
representation of women and men (14 women and 13 men) reporting this so as to
suggest that there was no gendered division in terms of physical access. 104 Three
interviewees were unable to comment due to a lack of experience using these
services. However, two of the three who were unable to comment due to a lack of
experience responded from a place of resignation when discussing personal access
to healthcare services, one of whom was Kumuthuvalli, a 28-year-old female from
Passara: ‘Those who are poor, still they live like that — either before or after
citizenship. Those who have the money, they can improve their health, but for the
poor, nothing changes’. 105 The other was her neighbour, Anandan, a 53 year-old
male from Passara, who remarked: ‘We are living in isolation. For this reason we
don’t know how to go to town and buy medicines or other things. We stay in this
place only, because we don’t know of any changes’. 106 Though the words of two
individuals do not indicate a trend, their lack of experience using healthcare
services beyond the estate indicate a self-perceived sense of non-entitlement to a
world outside the estate, and hence should not be overlooked.
2 Education
The majority of questionnaire survey respondents indicated that access to schools

outside one’s respective estate had improved since the 2003 grant of citizenship,
with women predominating in this response. 107 However, more than three-quarters
of those who responded ‘no’ when asked whether access to schools outside the
estate had improved since 2003 are from Dickoya, indicating a serious lack of
access to public education in this community despite their recently acquired
citizenship. 108
102 It should be noted that 77 of 100 respondents (37 women and 40 men) indicated that they did
have access to government healthcare services beyond the estate prior to 2003. See Figure 1.
103 See Figure 2.
104 Similarly, the majority of interviewees (13 female and 15 male) indicated that they did have
access to government healthcare services beyond the estate prior to the 2003 grant of
citizenship.
105 Interview with Anonymous (Patrick Balazo, 10 August 2016).
106 Interview with Anonymous (Patrick Balazo, 10 August 2016).
107 Figure 3.
108 Figure 4.
20
Better Must Come
Would you say your access to government healthcare

services beyond the estate has improved as a result of the 2003
grant of citizenship?
Totals Results by Region

14
100 1
12 2 3 2
3 2
79 10 4 4
80 8
6 12 11 11
9 10 10
60 4 8 8
Yes 2 No
40 39 0
40 No Yes
Nanu Oya
Nanu Oya
Nuwara Eliya
Nuwara Eliya
Passara
Passara
Dickoya
Dickoya
21
20 10 11
0
Total Women Men Women Men
Figure 1 Figure 2
Would you say your access to government school outside

the estate has improved as a result of the 2003 grant of
citizenship?

14
100 0 1 0
12 0
90 2 2
76 10
80 8 9 9
70 6 13 12 12 13
10 10
60 4
Yes 2 3 3 No
50 40
36 0
40 No Yes
Nanu Oya
Nanu Oya
Nuwara Eliya
Nuwara Eliya
Passara
Passara
Dickoya
Dickoya
30 23
20 10 13
10
0
Figure 3 109 Figure 4
When asked whether access to government schools outside the estate has
improved since the 2003 grant of citizenship, the majority of interviewees (18/30)
indicated that access has improved, with an equal representation of women and
men reporting this so as to suggest that there was no gendered division in terms of
109 One male respondent from Dickoya chose not to answer this question.
21
physical access. 110 Of the remaining 12 interviewees who indicated that access
has not improved, seven were also unable to access schools prior to 2003, meaning
that nearly a quarter of those interviewed are entirely reliant on estate schools. One
such person was Annamalai, a 52-year-old male from Passara, who stated: ‘When
I was young, my family faced many financial problems, and there was the high
cost of transport, so because of that I was unable to attend town schools. The same
reasons are also preventing my children from going to school outside the estate
today’. 111 Four of the remaining five interviewees have had access to non-estate
schools all along, and one reported that a non-estate school was the only available
school during his youth.
3 Employment
More than half of all survey respondents indicated that access to formal
employment outside of one’s respective estate has improved since 2003. 112 Access
has improved more for urban rather than rural respondents, and for women. 113 The
majority or rural respondents have indicated that access to such opportunities has
not improved, and of particular concern, Dickoya is again substantially
overrepresented in these findings with only four out of 12 male respondents
indicating that access has indeed improved. 114
When asked whether access to formal employment outside the estate has
improved since the 2003 grant of citizenship, the majority of interviewees (17/29)
indicated that access has not improved, with a near equal representation of women
and men indicating that this was so (eight women and nine men). The majority of
those reporting an improvement in access or entitlement to formal employment
outside of the Estate since 2003 were already able to secure such employment
prior to the grant of citizenship, suggesting that little has changed for those who
were unable to access said employment prior to 2003. The claim of ‘no
opportunities’ predominates for those interviewees who are rurally located.
Further, it is only in rural regions where transport issues were reported as
preventing interviewees from seeking employment, as articulated by Annamalai,
who remarked: ‘We don’t have a place outside [the estate] because of
transportation problems. There are so many vacancies in town, but we can’t go to
110 Though this may suggest that there is no gendered division in terms of physical access to
schools beyond the estate, this should only be read as a provisional finding that overlooks the
historical subordination of women within the plantation labour regime, and how the forces of
social reproduction continue to impact access to services. Although women perform the most
vital element of plantation labour, the very plucking of tea upon which the plantation economy
rests, it is also women who perform ‘most of the (unpaid) care work within the household’:
Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47) 247. Because of the unspoken expectation for women to
attend to children, the sick and the elderly, the imposed responsibility to ensure that one’s
household is kept in order, and finally the need to contribute to household income by way of
waged work on the plantation, some women may shoulder an undue work load, a ‘second
shift’: Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Second Shift (Penguin Books 2003). For this reason,
women may not have the same ease of access to schools beyond the estate as compared with
their male counterparts, raising the question of how the forces of social reproduction delineate
women’s access to education.
111 Interview with Annamalai (Patrick Balazo, 10 August 2016).
112 Figure 5.
113 Figure 6.
114 Figure 6.
22
Better Must Come
town because of the transportation problems. If people come and offer

employment and job vacancies here, we can work’. 115
4 Political Participation
Just over half of all survey respondents have indicated that their ability to
participate in some manner of the political process has improved since 2003. 116
Of those that have reported this, men predominate. As well, urban respondents
account for the majority of those who have reported an improvement. 117
Would you say your access to employment in the formal
sector outside the estate has improved as a result of the 2003

100 Yes No
90
80 14
12 3 2
70 10 4 3
8 7 8 9
60 51 48 6 11 12
4 10 8 9
50 Yes 5
2 4 4
40 No 0 0
29 27
Nanu Oya
Nanu Oya
Nuwara Eliya
Nuwara Eliya
Passara
Passara
Dickoya
Dickoya
30 21 22
20
10
0
Figure 5 118 Figure 6
115 Interview with Annamalai (Patrick Balazo, 10 August 2016).

116 Figure 7.
117 Figure 8.
118 One male respondent from Nanu Oya chose not to answer this question.
23
Would you say your ability to participate in the local,

municipal, provincial or national political process has
improved as a result of the 2003 grant of citizenship?

100 Yes No
90
80 14
12 2 2
70 10 5 7 3
8 8 8
60 53 6 11 12
47 4 9 10
50 Yes 7 6 5 5
2
40 0 0
29 No
24 26
Nanu Oya
Nanu Oya
Nuwara Eliya
Nuwara Eliya
Passara
Passara
Dickoya
Dickoya
30 21
20
10
0
Figure 7 Figure 8
In sum, women are overrepresented in reporting that the ability to partake in the
political process has not improved, and it should be noted that less than half of
Passara’s female respondents and none of Dickoya’s female respondents indicated
any improvement. 119
When asked whether access to the political process has improved since the
2003 grant of citizenship, the majority of interviewees (16/30) indicated that
access has improved, with men predominating in this response (six women and 10
men). Among this 16, only two rural interviewees report an improvement in
political participation, one of whom was too young to participate prior to 2003,
suggesting that rural communities have been neglected in the post-2003 era. A
perceived increased opportunity to become involved in the political process was
the leading factor as to why interviewees perceived their access to have been
improved since 2003. Among the initial 14 interviewees who reported no
improvement in access and entitlement to political participation, the preference
not to participate is the leading reason for the reported lack of improvement, with
the distrust of politicians as the second leading reason. For instance,
Privadharshani, a 27 year-old female from Nuwara Eliya, stated, ‘I’m not
interested in politics. Listening to politicians is a waste of time, because only when
they want our votes do they come and talk to us, but after they don’t do any work
for us. This is why I hate politics’. 120 Mirroring such sentiment, 65-year-old
Balasundaram, a 65-year-old female from Passara kept her comments short,
‘There’s nothing good about politics. Politicians do nothing for us’. 121 It should
be noted that six of the seven who held a preference not to participate were women,
and when combined with those women who stated that access had improved but
chose not to participate, a total of 11/15 female interviewees have chosen not to
119 Figure 8.
120 Interview with Nuwara Eliya (Patrick Balazo, 10 August 2016).
121 Interview with Balasundaram (Patrick Balazo, 10 August 2016).
24
Better Must Come
participate, and are in some respect alienated from the political process. Finally,
rurally located interviewees constitute the majority (8/14) of those who report no
improvement in access.
5 Belonging
Belonging is difficult to define and difficult to appraise. As previously noted, this

study is placed within the context of the UNHCR’s global #IBELONG Campaign
to end statelessness by 2024. For this reason, the term belonging used in this paper
is in direct reference to the #IBELONG Campaign, though this does not bring us
any closer to what belonging actually means. To further complicate matters,
nowhere does the UNHCR define this term, though it does provide an explanation
of what belonging is not:
Across the world today more than ten million people are told they don’t belong
ANYWHERE. They are called ‘stateless’. They are denied a nationality. And with
it, they are denied their basic rights. Statelessness can mean a life without
education, without medical care, or legal employment. It can mean a life without
the ability to move freely, without prospects, or hope. 122
In view of the above, and for the purposes of this paper, belonging is to be
understood as having a nationality that entitles one to basic rights such as, but not
limited to, the right to education, the right to medical care, the right to work,
freedom of movement and to a life where one is ultimately free to pursue their
hopes and dreams.
The challenge of trying to qualify and quantify belonging owes to its intangible
nature. Belonging is not static, nor is it a good to be kept. Rather, it is reified only
through the words and actions of one’s peers, friends, and loved ones, and by the
degree to which one finds oneself reflected in the prevailing dominant culture.
Though this explanation is not beyond the realm of comprehension, it does not
easily provide for the undertaking of annual United Nations Human Belonging
Index whereupon social scientists can measure how belonging has waxed and
waned throughout the years. However, this does not mean that it is beyond the
scope of enquiry, for not only is belonging an essential component of human social
life, it implicitly shapes the historical experience of groups that have at one time
not belonged, such as the Up-Country Tamils of Sri Lanka.
Though it is difficult to capture the extent to which persons and populations
feel as though they belong, because people simply perceive themselves to either
belong or not belong to a given group or society, an appraisal of belonging can
nonetheless be pursued. In an effort to determine the extent of belonging among
this population, questionnaire survey respondents and interviewees were asked:
whether the acquisition of Sri Lankan citizenship, and by extension formal
recognition as people of Sri Lanka, was of benefit in toto; whether they perceived
themselves to be the equals of the majority population; and what the foremost
challenge confronting this community was. Given that ‘the main reason people are
stateless is because of discrimination’, 123 equality, meaning equal rights,
responsibilities and opportunities was chosen to gauge whether people felt as
though they now belonged. Still, questionnaire survey respondents and
122 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘IBELONG — Join the Campaign to End
Statelessness’ (Website) <http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/>.
123 ibid.
25
interviewees were free to interpret equality as they so pleased. It may very well be
that feeling equal does not capture the affective properties of belonging that lay
beyond rights entitlements, but it does provide a measure of insight into whether
or not the acquisition of citizenship after a prolonged period of statelessness
necessarily entails belonging.
Just over half of all survey respondents have indicated that the acquisition of
citizenship has been of benefit, with a near equal representation of women and
men indicating that this was so. 124 Further, the majority of respondents who
indicated that citizenship has been of benefit are from urban locales. Conversely,
the majority of respondents who saw citizenship as bringing with it no benefit are
from rural locales. 125 It should be noted that half of the women from Nanu Oya,
and all women from Dickoya deem the acquisition of citizenship to be of no
benefit. 126
The majority of interviewees (19/30) see no benefit from the 2003 grant of
citizenship. More than half of all women and men are of this opinion (eight women
and 11 men), with men slightly overrepresented. The leading reason provided for
this sentiment is some variation of the general belief that nothing has changed, that
nothing has been provided by the government in the wake of the grant of
citizenship, that interviewees are not aware of any benefits and that the
government continues to neglect this community. For instance, Santos, a 51-year-
old man from Nanu Oya, gave the following response when asked if he or his
community had benefitted from the 2003 grant of citizenship: ‘Things now are
exactly like they were 100 years before. Still it is the same, nothing has changed.
There are no benefits with citizenship’. 127 Of the remaining 11 interviewees, five
believed the grant of citizenship to be of partial benefit only, and government
neglect was provided as reason for such ambivalence. The remaining six
interviewees explicitly stated that the grant of citizenship was of benefit, with each
interviewee providing a different reason for this response. 128
Slightly more than half of all survey respondents indicated that the Up-Country
Tamil community has indeed achieved equality with the majority population in
wake of the 2003 grant of citizenship, with women and men equally
represented. 129 Like the above findings, the majority of respondents who perceive
equality to have been achieved are from urban locales. Conversely, and although
women and men are again equally represented, the majority of those respondents
who do not perceive equality to have been achieved are from rural locales, with
over half of all respondents from Passara and Dickoya having indicated this. 130
124 Figure 9.
125 Figure 10.
126 Figure 10.
127 Interview with Santos (Patrick Balazo, 10 August 2016).
128 The six reasons provided for why the grant of citizenship is deemed to have been of benefit
are as follows: with citizenship, there is now peace between all communities; the overall
standard of living has improved despite low levels of remuneration for plantation labour; the
government has increased funding to Up-Country Tamil communities; citizenship enables
one to do anything they please; because of citizenship Up-Country Tamil people now receive
respect when in town; citizenship has made all Sri Lankans equal.
129 Figure 11.
130 Figure 12.
26
Better Must Come
Overall, would you say your community has benefitted from

the 2003 grant of citizenship?

100 Yes No
90
80 14
12 1
70 10 6 5 5 5
8 6 9
60 51 49 6 12 12
Yes 4 6 7 7 8 7
50 2 4
40 0 0
No
26 24
Nanu Oya
Nanu Oya
Nuwara Eliya
Nuwara Eliya
Passara
Passara
Dickoya
Dickoya
30 25 25
20
10
0
Figure 9 Figure 10
Would you say your community has achieved equality with

the majority of Sri Lankan citizens as a result of the 2003

100 Yes No
80 14
12 1
10 6 5 4
56 8 6 6 7
60 6 9
12
4 7 8 9
44 Yes 2 6 6 5
0 3
40 No
28 28
Nanu Oya
Nanu Oya
Nuwara Eliya
Nuwara Eliya
Passara
Passara
Dickoya
Dickoya
22 22
20
0
Figure 11 Figure 12
When asked whether the Up-Country Tamil population has achieved equality
with the majority population following the 2003 grant of citizenship, the majority
of interviewees (19/30) do not view their community as having achieved such
equality, with a near equal representation of women and men indicating that this
was so (nine women and 10 men). The leading reason provided as to why
interviewees are of this opinion is that the Sinhala majority are still very much
perceived as the dominant ethnic group at the expense of the Up-Country Tamil
community, wherein the needs and wants of the former take precedent over those
27
of the latter. Of the 11 remaining interviewees, two were unable to comment

because they had no experience to reflect upon, suggesting the presence of a lack
of self-entitlement to a life beyond the estate. The remaining nine interviewees
explicitly stated that their community had achieved equality with the majority
population, with a belief that Sri Lankans were now united provided as the leading
reason for this response.
Finally, when asked about the foremost challenge confronting the Up-Country
Tamil population, and what interviewees believed could be done to overcome said
challenge, the nexus of poverty, low incomes and a lack of job opportunities was
the most commonly cited challenge highlighted among those who were able to
respond (14/29). Securing employment other than that provided by the estate and
increased government support for the Up-Country Tamil community alongside
increased parliamentary representation were the most common responses provided
as to how this challenge may be overcome.
DISCUSSION
Based on the findings presented above, it can be postulated that access and
entitlement to healthcare, education and employment among Sri Lanka’s
previously stateless Up-Country Tamil population has improved as a result of the
2003 grant of citizenship. Though not everyone consulted shared these views, the
majority of questionnaire survey respondents and interviewees have reported a
general improvement in access and entitlement with respect to these three
indicators. In contrast, 50.7 per cent of all those consulted indicated that access
and entitlement to political participation has not improved in the wake of
citizenship, yet this makes for a non-negligible 49.2 per cent of respondents and
interviewees who believe it has. Evidently, the acquisition of citizenship has
brought with it substantive benefit, but when the above findings are disaggregated
it is made apparent that not all of those consulted have an equal share in these
benefits.
When accounting for the responses of the urban versus rural population, it is
rural respondents and interviewees who are overrepresented in reporting a lack of
improvement in access and entitlement following the 2003 grant of citizenship.
For instance, among the 23 survey respondents who indicated that access to
government schools outside the estate had not improved since 2003, 21 are rurally
located, of whom 18 are from Dickoya. Further, more than half of the survey
respondents who indicated that access to formal employment outside the estate
had not improved are again rural, with seven of 10 rural interviewees supporting
this claim by either stating that no such opportunity exists, or that the prohibitive
cost of transport prevents them from pursuing such opportunities. Of the 47 survey
respondents who indicated that the ability to participate in the political process had
not improved, 29 are rurally based in addition to a further nine out of 10 rural
interviewees who for one reason or another are alienated from the political
process. As well, it is rural respondents that comprise the majority of those who
see the acquisition of citizenship as non-beneficial and perceive themselves not as
the equals of the majority population. For these reasons, and despite the general
improvement in access and entitlement to each indicator under investigation, it can
be said that there exists a rural rights deficit in the Up-Country.
Beyond the urban-rural divide, analysis of the above findings reveals three
more findings, the first of which is a self-perceived non-entitlement to life outside
28
Better Must Come
or beyond the estate coupled with an absent sense of equality. To be sure, only a
minority of those consulted conveyed such sentiment, but because it is said that
‘stateless people want nothing more than to come in from the cold — to belong’, 131
any indication that some among the previously stateless have yet to come in from
the cold warrants attention. With respect to healthcare, two interviewees were
unable to speak of their experience using the healthcare system because they had
never attempted to use these services. As for employment, five of the 17
interviewees who reported that access and entitlement had not improved had
chosen not to pursue employment opportunities outside the estate, again
suggesting the presence of a self-imposed sense that one is not entitled to life
beyond the estate. Added to this are nine interviewees who indicated that informal
employment beyond the estate was indeed available but elected not to pursue such
opportunities. Further, among the 14 interviewees who indicated that their ability
to participate in the political process had not improved in the post-2003 era, seven
had simply chosen not to participate. While these findings are in no way
representative of the majority of those consulted, they are underpinned by the 44
survey respondents and 19 interviewees who do not perceive equality with the
majority population to have been achieved, not to mention the two interviewees
who were unable to comment because they had no experience of life outside the
estate. Thus, whether it is the four who have expressly stated that they have no
place outside the estate or the limited few who have elected not to involve
themselves with matters beyond the estate, the boundaries of the estate seem to
delimit the choices and opportunities of a significant few.
An analysis of the above findings also brings another finding into focus: the
acquisition of citizenship as non-beneficial in these early stages. Of the 100
respondents surveyed, 49 view the acquisition of citizenship as bringing with it no
substantive benefit beyond the legal identity before the state it provides. When this
number is coupled with the 19 of 30 interviewees who share this view, 52.3 per
cent of all those consulted deem the acquisition of citizenship to be non-beneficial.
This finding does appear to conflict with the general improvement in access and
entitlement to healthcare, education and employment reported elsewhere, though
such conflict is not reason enough to overlook or dismiss how people qualify their
experience of citizenship. This finding does not mean that the acquisition of
citizenship was held to be detrimental, for no one who viewed it as being non-
beneficial suggested this. Rather, it challenges the notion that statelessness ‘can
be resolved in a single moment’, 132 and establishes that declarations of Sri Lanka’s
success in ending statelessness were made in haste.
A Discussion
1 The Rural Rights Deficit
The rural rights deficit outlined above is underpinned by three interconnected

variables that operate to reinforce one another: poverty; the physical isolation that
comes with residing in enclave-like plantations which either precludes the regular
presence of Up-Country Tamils from public spaces beyond the estate or
intercourse with the majority population; and political alienation. Among

132 ibid 20.
29
interviewees, it is poverty that precludes them from access to non-estate schools

because the finances needed to cover the costs of transportation to said schools are
unavailable. However, it is because these communities are so remote that the cost
of transportation is so high. Of course, an increase in household income would
provide the finances needed to meet such costs. Yet, opportunities to secure formal
employment outside the estate either do not exist, or the cost of transportation to
pursue such opportunities and by extension increase household income prohibits
people from doing so. Thus, the inability to pursue non-estate education remains.
In short, poverty and physical isolation combine to limit one’s options in the fields
of education and employment, and in this way the right to education and the right
to work are never fully realised. Additionally, alienation from the political process,
which is itself indicative of a political rights deficit, marks the more rural regions
of the Up-Country. In this way, there is little opportunity for rural Up-Country
Tamil citizenry to voice their concerns on matters of education and employment
and challenge the reigning rights deficit.
Because the right to education, employment and political participation are
without full realisation in the more rural regions of the Up-Country, 133 recently
acquired Sri Lankan citizenship is largely nominal with respect to these rights
insofar as legal recognition before the state has brought with it little substantive
benefit in terms of access and entitlement to education, employment and political
participation 14 years on from having acquired citizenship.
2 Belonging in Place
As the interviews have revealed, at least four of those consulted are of the view
that they have no place outside the estate, while another significant few have
elected not to involve themselves with matters beyond their respective estate. This
suggests that the plantation boundary limits the choices and opportunities
available to some or that others do not feel as though they are welcome in the
world beyond the estate.
As stated by Kathlene Mee and Sarah Wright, ‘belonging connects matter to
place, through various practices of boundary making and inhabitation which signal
that a particular collection of objects, animals, plants, germs, people, practices,
performances, or ideas is meant “to be” in a place’. 134 This understanding of
belonging is in keeping with the Up-Country Tamils as belonging to Sri Lanka,
and specifically the Up-Country, given that this region of the country has been
self-identified as their place and one that spatially and symbolically links this
population to Sri Lanka. Further, there is no one way of belonging as it is possible
‘to belong in many different ways at many different scales’. 135 For this reason, the
Up-Country Tamil population can again be said to belong to the Up-Country and
to one another as a group. However, it is precisely because there are different ways
and scales of belonging that some do not belong to a world beyond the estate. Put
133 The rights deficits observed in Dickoya coupled with the overwhelming belief that the
acquisition of citizenship has been of little benefit also recorded in Dickoya signal the need
for more comparative research to be conducted on this plantation and those in the Dickoya
region with plantations in other regions of Central and Uva provinces to determine whether
the findings on Dickoya are an aberration, or genuinely reflect how people qualify citizenship
in the more rural regions of the Up-Country.
134 Kathleen Mee and Sarah Wright, ‘Geographies of Belonging’ (2009) 41(4) Environment and
Planning 772, 772.
135 ibid.
30
Better Must Come
differently, belonging may be realised in one’s immediate family and community,

school or religious community, and gender or age group, but when scaled up to
more impersonal spaces and places this same sense of belonging is not necessarily
reproduced, particularly for those who have been constructed to be members of an
other ethnic collectivity and long considered not to belong to the nation-state
community, 136 such as the Up-Country Tamil population. For interviewees who
expressed that they had no place in the spaces beyond the estate, and for those who
otherwise opt not to involve themselves in matters outside the estate, it may very
well be that a legacy of isolation and discrimination has produced a common sense
understanding of the plantation as the place where one belongs, or conversely, that
such belonging is presumed not to be found outside the estate.
This absent sense of belonging is again underpinned by the 44 survey
respondents and 19 interviewees who do not perceive equality with the majority
population to have been achieved. As previously discussed, it may very well be
that feeling equal does not capture the affective properties of belonging that lay
beyond rights entitlements, and by extension, that equality and belonging are not
wholly equivalent. However, by determining that some among this population do
not feel as though they are equals of the majority population, and based on an
understanding of belonging as informed by the UNHCR #IBELONG Campaign, it
can be said that the acquisition of citizenship has not provided some previously
stateless persons with the belonging it is assumed to provide.
3 De Facto Citizenship
Based on the evidence gathered from what is a rather small sample size, and
although it is only a minority who harbour a sense of not belonging, 137 the majority
of all those consulted in this study deem the acquisition of citizenship as non-
beneficial and in so doing underscore that the legal conferment of citizenship
should not be taken as a panacea for the many encumbrances that befall the
stateless. It is true that the acquisition of a legal identity before the state, and thus
all states, is invaluable when considering the many and varied degradations that
statelessness can invite, but the act of conferment and the provision of rights and
entitlements are not one in the same. Unfortunately, the literature on how
previously stateless groups view the acquisition of citizenship has yet to be fully
developed, and it is only the situation of the previously stateless Urdu-speakers of
Bangladesh that this study may be compared with as many in this community
ascribe little value to citizenship given that there too, a legacy of discrimination
and marginalisation largely operates to prevent this community from securing the
136 Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Intersectionality, Citizenship and Contemporary Politics of Belonging’

(2007) 10(4) Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 561.
137 Four of 30 interviewees revealed that they do not interact with the world beyond the estate,
suggesting that one’s respective plantation is the place where one belongs. With respect to
healthcare, two interviewees quoted above were unable to speak of their experience using the
healthcare system because they had never attempted to use these services. Kumuthuvalli
claimed that for the poor nothing will change, hence there is no sense in seeking medical
assistance other than what is available in the estate, whereas Anandan declared that he and his
family stay within the estate because they know not of the world beyond the estate. Added to
this are the two interviewees who could not comment on whether the Up-Country Tamil
population had achieved equality with the majority population given that they had no
experience of life beyond their estates to reflect on.
31
rights of citizenship that are said to be theirs and which they are owed. 138
Nevertheless, the findings presented herein challenge the reigning narrative of
ending statelessness in Sri Lanka as a tale of success and are instructive for the
global #IBELONG Campaign to end statelessness by 2024.
4 Seeking Dissensus
Although there exists a rural rights deficit, this study has not revealed that those
who are subject to this deficit and unable to enact their rights have undertaken to
construct a dissensus against the denial of rights they suffer. Rather, inaction,
accommodation or resignation characterise how people respond to such denial. It
must be understood that people’s actions or the lack thereof, and the manner by
which they exercise their agency is conditioned by the cultural contexts and social
structures they inhabit, meaning that the specific form agency takes will vary in
different times and places, 139 though it is never entirely absent. However, as Bass
argues, the Up-Country Tamil population is acutely aware of how ‘hegemonic
social and political systems allow them little leverage or voice in affairs beyond
their immediate surroundings’. 140 For this reason, inaction, or what can otherwise
be referred to as resignation, ‘is often the result of a pragmatic decision to avoid
conflict when their efforts would not likely lead to tangible results’. 141 Still, it is
imperative to view resignation and resistance not as antithetical but as ‘being a
continuum of one activity’, 142 for resignation is not indicative of an absence of
agency but does signal that the ‘coincidence of forces and factors that will enable
change to occur’, 143 such as constructing a dissensus against a denial of rights,
have yet to emerge and that inaction or resignation is the most profitable course of
action for the time being. Ultimately, the inaction, accommodation or resignation
observed among some respondents is a strategised response to the hegemonic
social and political systems some have encountered, though this particular method
of negotiation is but one of many options pursued by respondents in the given
historical moment. 144
Be that as it may, it must be understood that out of a sum total of only 30
interviews, inaction, accommodation or resignation to hegemonic social and
138 Khalid Hussain, ‘The End of Bihari Statelessness’ (2009) 32 Forced Migration Review 30;
Ninette Kelley, ‘Ideas, Interests and Institutions: Conceding Citizenship in Bangladesh’
(2010) 60(2) University of Toronto Law Journal 349; Katherine Southwick, ‘The Urdu-
speakers of Bangladesh: An Unfinished Story of Enforcing Citizenship Rights’ in Sri Lanka’
in Brad K Blitz and Maureen Lynch (eds), Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative
Study on the Benefits of Nationality (Edward Elgar 2011) 115; Victoria Redclift, Statelessness
and Citizenship: Camps and the Creation of Political Space (Routledge 2013).
139 Sherry B Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power and the Acting Subject
(Duke University Press 2006); Bass (n 61).
140 Bass (n 61) 99–100.
141 ibid.
142 Doug Munro, ‘Patterns of Resistance and Accommodation’ in Brij V Lal, Doug Munro and
Edward D Beechert (eds), Plantation Workers: Resistance and Accommodation (University
of Hawaii Press 1993) 10.
143 Bass (n 61) 99.
144 By way of example, 30-year-old Kanchana reported that her child was discriminated against
when attending a town school because of their family’s ethnic identity. It was said that Sinhala
students were favoured by the teachers, and that as a result her child received far less attention
than Sinhala students. Further, her child was made to sit at the back of the class as opposed to
Sinhala students who were seated at the front. In response, Kanchana removed her child from
the town school and enrolled her child in an estate school.
32
Better Must Come
political systems was only observed among a minority, 145 and given that the Up-
Country Tamil population numbers nearly one million, 146 it would be
irresponsible to state with authority that resignation is how this population as a
whole responds to these systems, or that dissensus does not exist in the Up-
Country. Moreover, the short time spent with each interviewee along with how
interview questions were structured may not have allowed for methods of
negotiating hegemonic systems apart from direct confrontation to emerge in the
responses provided by those consulted, and for this reason the claim that
resignation is the primary response to such systems advanced above should not be
read as conclusive. 147 As Scott reminds us, ‘much of the politics of subordinate
groups falls into the category of everyday forms of resistance’ which include such
acts as ‘foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, feigned ignorance,
desertion, pilfering, smuggling, poaching, arson, slander, sabotage, surreptitious
assault and murder, anonymous threats, and so on’. 148 Such resistance is decidedly
clandestine and unlikely to do more than marginally affect the various forms of
exploitation that subordinate groups encounter, 149 though it is precisely because
of ‘the nature of the acts themselves and the self-interested muteness of the
antagonists’ 150 that social scientists preoccupied with directs threats to power, the
author included, are unable to uncover the forms of everyday resistance
surreptitiously deployed to advance the interests of subordinate groups or to thwart
the claims of those who dominate the exercise of power. 151 What is more, the
absence of direct confrontation or organised social movements to challenge
prevailing power hierarchies may be wrongfully observed by researchers as
quiescence or submission, thereby overlooking ‘the slow, grinding, quiet
struggle’ 152 against exploitation that relies on public displays of submission as a
necessary tactic in those circumstances where open defiance is either impossible
or entails mortal danger. 153 For these reasons, this study may not have captured
the fine-grained totality of the methods used to respond to hegemonic social and
political systems by those consulted, such that resignation in the face of adversity
is only a provisional finding.
145 Four of 30 interviewees revealed inaction, accommodation or resignation as a response to

difficulties with negotiating access to healthcare, education and formal employment beyond
the estate.
146 Department of Census and Statistics, Census of Population and Housing — 2012 (Report, 30
June 2015) 4.
147 Interviewees who revealed they had encountered discrimination or other less explicit barriers
that prevented them from accessing healthcare, education and formal employment beyond the
estate, and from engaging the political process, were asked how they responded to these
barriers so as to gauge whether interviewees had undertaken to construct a dissensus against
the denial of rights they suffer. Still, by concerning itself with only open, immediate and direct
responses to such hostility and discrimination, this line of inquiry may have not captured the
covert methods of negotiating and responding to hegemonic social and political systems that
operate to deny Up-Country Tamils their rightful access to healthcare, education, formal
employment and political participation.
148 James C Scott, ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance’ in Forrest D Colburn (ed), Everyday Forms
of Peasant Resistance (M E Sharpe 1989) 5–6.
149 James C Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale
University Press 1985).
150 ibid 36.
151 Scott, ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance’ (n 148).
152 Scott, Weapons of the Weak (n 149) 37.
153 Scott, ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance’ (n 148).
33
Although resignation may not be the whole of the story when considering that
everyday forms of resistance may have been left unaccounted for, it nonetheless
has important implications for the concept of dissensus and raises the question of
whether this concept has much purchase when applied to real-world scenarios.
Again, rights belong to individuals ‘when they can do something with them to
construct a dissensus against the denial of rights they suffer’, 154 that is, to dispute
the social consensus that sees one’s rights denied. Yet, if we return once more to
the hegemonic social and political systems that preclude some from accessing non-
estate schools and employment while convincing others that they are not entitled
to non-estate healthcare, education and employment, or to participation in the
political process while recalling that these systems remain unchallenged, it is clear
that these individuals do not have the rights they have as guaranteed to them by
the ‘inscriptions of the community as free and equal’. 155 In other words, the rural
rights deficit outlined above brings into full view ‘the contradictions of a social
order which presupposes equality but simultaneously disavows it’. 156 And again,
this study has produced little to no evidence of rural respondents mobilising to
secure that which has been guaranteed to them by way of dissensus, meaning that
at the moment of analysis, many were unable to seize their rights despite
constitutional guarantees. For those who have not taken such action, such as those
discussed in this Part, the acquisition of Sri Lankan citizenship is little else than a
hollow inscription of equality and will remain as a site of either dormant or active
struggle, contestation and negotiation for as long as these individuals remain
without the rights they have.
CONCLUSION
On 15 November 1948, Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population was rendered

stateless, though because the realisation of one’s human rights is contingent on
one’s political status as a citizen, this population had effectively lost the right to
have rights. Specifically, because nationality is a prerequisite for accessing
political and judicial processes and for claiming economic, social and cultural
rights, statelessness is a matter of unparalleled concern for those who have been
rendered as such. Fortunately, some 55 years later, on 11 November 2003, this
situation was finally resolved, thereby remedying that predicament confronting all
stateless persons alike: the absence of any legal identity to which no formal
recognition by any state is owed, and all that this entails. For this reason, it would
not be unjustified to presume that this population would be entitled to the entire
gamut of human rights guaranteed by the state, yet for many among Sri Lanka’s
previously stateless Up-Country Tamils, recently acquired Sri Lankan citizenship
is largely nominal, operating to mask the continued marginalisation of this
population and deflect attention from an enduring human rights deficit believed to
have been resolved. Though it would be absurd to condemn in any way the
conferment of citizenship to this once stateless population, unfettered celebration
of this landmark development alongside declarations of ending statelessness in Sri
Lanka as a success are perhaps as equally absurd given that such ceremony
obscures the day-to-day realities confronted by many in this community, making
statelessness and citizenship in the Up-Country a twice-told tale. Granted, it was
154 Rancière, ‘Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’ (n 19) 305–6.
155 ibid 302.
156 Rancière, On the Shores of Politics (n 25) 9.
34
Better Must Come
found that there has been a general improvement in either access or entitlement to
healthcare, education and employment in wake of the 2003 grant of citizenship,
but much like the reported success of ending statelessness in Sri Lanka, this too is
a rather narrow conclusion to draw and risks concealing the ongoing human rights
deficit in the Up-Country twice over.
With respect to those located in the more rural parts of the Up-Country, the
rights to education, employment, and political participation remain unfulfilled. It
is true that this situation is underpinned by the interplay of poverty, isolation and
political alienation and not a product of direct discrimination, though it would be
altogether incorrect to conclude that this rights deficit is the product of natural
forces. Rather, the legacy of educational neglect, the ascription of this population
as plantation workers, and a history of institutionalised disenfranchisement — all
of which are informed by an undercurrent of Sinhala Buddhist ethno-nationalism
and hegemonic social and political systems — sustain this rural rights deficit. In
other words, there is no single perpetrator to be held accountable for this situation,
for it is institutional forces that render recently acquired citizenship to be at best
second class, but this is not reason to avoid seeking redress.
Beyond this rights deficit, a sense of belonging in the wake of citizenship is in
disrepair, buttressed as it is by the belief that recently acquired citizenship is of no
benefit and that many perceive of themselves not as the equals of the majority
population. Though it was only a minority that expressed such sentiment, some
within this population harbour a self-imposed sense of non-entitlement to life
beyond the plantation. Of course, that this is self-imposed is not to suggest these
individuals arrived at such an understanding of the world in isolation, but that fifty-
five years of this population as a much-maligned stateless Sri Lankan labour force
are revealed in the words and actions of certain individuals. For this reason, it can
be said that belonging has not followed from the conferment of citizenship, or that
the latter does not nor should be understood as necessarily entailing the former.
However, when this express sense of not belonging is placed in view of the many
who deem the acquisition of citizenship as bringing with it no substantive benefit
along with the general sense that this population are not the equals of the majority
population, the assumption that citizenship provides for belonging is further
corrupted.
Looking now to dissensus, this concept has revealed that among the minority
who are subject to a rights deficit, inaction, accommodation or resignation
characterises how people respond to the denial of rights they suffer. In some
respect, this is positive insofar as it suggests that the majority of those consulted
are not without the rights they have, or that their rights have in fact been fulfilled.
In contrast, for those who continue to struggle under hegemonic social and
political systems, no indication of a dissensus being waged against the denial of
rights they suffer was identified, suggesting that at the moment of analysis there
are some who are without the rights they have and that the conferment of Sri
Lankan citizenship is little else than a hollow inscription or guarantee of equal
rights. However, it is because of this very finding that dissensus maintains utility
as a conceptual tool as it allows one to avoid identifying any group as altogether
rightless or without agency, for when agency is understood as a continuum of one
activity ranging from resignation to resistance, dissensus can be deployed to
acknowledge and preserve the agency of those in question irrespective of how that
agency is expressed. Furthermore, and though not by intentional design, it is
important to recall that everyday forms of resistance may evade detection by
35
researchers, and that labelling what is perceived to be quiescence as inaction,

accommodation, or resignation may altogether overlook clandestine though no
less important acts of resistance that for one reason or another remain
imperceptible from the vantage point of the researcher. Still, and despite this
acknowledgement, it is this concept’s reliance on express action and discourse that
limits its utility and may lead researchers to conclude that a given population is
without agency when definite evidence of dissensus has not been identified.
Globally speaking, the findings presented herein are instructive for the
UNHCR’s #IBELONG Campaign to end statelessness by 2024. That there
continues to exist a rural rights deficit in Up-Country Sri Lanka more than a decade
after this issue was finally resolved, and that the majority of those consulted in
what was a fairly limited sample size view the acquisition of citizenship as
bringing with it no substantive benefit, this paper challenges the notion that
statelessness ‘can be resolved in a single moment’, 157 and establishes that
declarations of Sri Lanka’s success in ending statelessness were made in haste.
The euphoria surrounding this campaign and the subsequent jubilation that ensues
when a stateless population has been granted citizenship are warranted, but when
the media campaigns, public service announcements, international consultants and
funding for such endeavours return to the ether, little may have changed for said
population apart from the possession of identification documents and the
opportunity to pay taxes. 158 In principle, this Campaign must be pursued, but if
little support, guidance and attention follow in the months, years, and decades after
a population has been provided citizenship, it should not be expected that
previously stateless persons will have the same rights and entitlements that their
compatriots have come to take for granted, or that these same people will naturally
begin to belong. With these potential shortcomings in mind, the #IBELONG
Campaign may deliver previously stateless communities and populations further
into the shadows upon the receipt of citizenship when the act of conferment is
celebrated and memorialised at the expense of true substantive change in the lives
of those who as we are told want ‘nothing more than to come in from the cold —
to belong’, 159 the (previously) stateless.
Moving forward, there is a need for more expansive research to be conducted
on the benefits of citizenship or the lack thereof among this population. For one,
only those living on plantations were consulted in this study, excluding a sizeable
demographic of Up-Country Tamils whose experiences of citizenship have not
been reflected in these pages. As well, the questions designed to capture how this
population has engaged the political process in the years following citizenship
were perhaps too broad and either did not allow or overlooked activities that were
nonetheless political but outside the scope of analysis and thus remained
unnoticed. In a more general sense, there is need now to conduct comparative
research on the experiences of citizenship among previously stateless persons
157 UNHCR Special Report (n 3).

158 ‘Over 1,500 articles were written about the Campaign and our materials reached up to 200
million people during the three weeks following the launch on 4 November 2014. Much of
the focus was on the high-profile supporters who signed the High Commissioner’s Open
Letter, including Angelina Jolie, Desmond Tutu, Louise Arbour, Madeleine Albright and
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. The ripple-effect of the Campaign has been far-reaching. The
BBC and Al Jazeera created their own videos and infographics to explain statelessness,
responding to public interest in the issue. Al Jazeera dedicated an episode of the programme
“The Stream” to the Campaign’: 2015 Campaign Update (n 33) 1.
36
Better Must Come
beyond the Sri Lankan context, namely the previously stateless Urdu-speakers of
Bangladesh, the many of Thailand’s hill tribes long without citizenship, or the
Makonde, the most recent tribe to be formally recognised as citizens by the
government of Kenya. Such research will allow for a more holistic understanding
of the experiences of previously stateless groups, provide for the identification of
both regional and international trends and allow for countries to learn from one
another’s experiences both before and after citizenship has been provided. Lastly,
such research will provide the requisite evidence to appraise the #IBELONG
Campaign at a global level and inform future efforts to end statelessness such that
the initial act of conferment is understood to be as equally important as the
substance of citizenship and belonging thereafter.
37
APPENDIX A
A Questionnaire Survey
Date:
Interview #:
Time:
Female or male interviewee:
Age:
Community:
1. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to access

government healthcare services? Yes [ ] No [ ]
a. Would you say your access to government healthcare services has
Yes [ ] No [ ] No Change [ ]

government education services? Yes [ ] No [ ]
a. Would you say your access to government education services has
3. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to secure

employment in the formal sector (legal employment) outside of the
plantation? Yes [ ] No [ ]
a. Would you say your access to formal employment (legal
employment) outside of the plantation has improved as a result of
4. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to participate in the
local, municipal, provincial, or national politic process? Yes [ ] No [ ]
Would you say your ability to participate in the local, municipal,
provincial, or national political process has improved as a result
of the 2003 grant of citizenship? Yes [ ] No [ ] No Change [ ]
5. Overall, would you say your community has benefitted from the 2003
6. Would you say your community has achieved equality with the majority
of Sri Lankan citizens as a result of the 2003 grant of citizenship?
Yes [ ] No [ ]
38
Better Must Come
APPENDIX B
A Interview Guide
Date:
Interview #:
Time:
Female/Male interviewee:
Age:
Community:

government healthcare services?
a. If so, how did you access these services and what was your
experience with these services like?
b. If not, what prevented you from accessing these services?
2. Since the 2003 grant of citizenship, has your access to government

healthcare services improved?
a. If so, what has your experience with these services been like?
b. If not, what has prevented you from being able to access these
services?
c. How have you coped with any discrimination, hostility, and other
barriers to access that has been encountered when trying to access
these services?
3. Are there healthcare services available to you other than those provided
by the government?
a. If so, what are they and how have you made use of these services?
4. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you or your children able to
access government education services?
a. If so, how did you or your children access these services and what
was your experience with the education system like?
b. If not, what prevented you or your children from accessing these
services?
5. Since the 2003 grant of citizenship, have your or your children’s access
to government education services improved?
a. If so, what has your or your children’s experience with these
services been like?
b. If not, what has prevented you or your children from being able to
access these services?
barriers to access that has been encountered when trying to access
these services?
6. Are there education services available to you or your children other than
those provided by the government?
39
a. If so, what are they and how have you or your children made use
of these services?
7. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to secure

plantation?
a. If so, how did you secure this employment and what was your
experience working in the formal sector like?
b. If not, what prevented you from securing formal employment
(legal employment) outside of the plantation?
8. Since the 2003 grant of citizenship, has your ability to secure

plantation improved?
a. If so, what has your experience working in the formal sector
outside of the plantation been like?
b. If not, what has prevented you from being able to secure
employment in the formal sector (legal employment) outside of
the plantation?
barriers to access that have been encountered when trying to
secure employment in the formal sector outside of the plantation?
9. Are there employment opportunities available to you other than those

found in the formal sector?
a. If so, what are they and how have you pursued these
opportunities?
10. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to participate in the
local (pradeshiya sabha), municipal, provincial, or national political
process?
a. If so, how did you participate and what was your experience
participating in the political process like?
b. If not, what prevented you from participating in the political
process?
11. Since the 2003 grant of citizenship, has your ability to participate in the
local (pradeshiya sabha), municipal, provincial, or national political
process improved?
a. If so, how has it improved and what has your experience
participating in the political process been like?
b. If not, what has prevented you from being able to participate in
the political process?
barriers to access that have been encountered when trying to
participate in the political process?
12. Overall, would you say that you or your community has benefited from
40
Better Must Come
13. In your opinion, would you say your community has achieved equality
with the majority of Sri Lankan citizens as a result of the 2003 grant of
citizenship?
14. What is the biggest challenge currently facing your community, and what
can be done to overcome this challenge?
41

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BETTER MUST COME: CITIZENSHIP AND BELONGING

1 P P Sivapragasam, ‘From Statelessness to Citizenship: Up-Country Tamils in Sri Lanka’ in

employment and political participation. In so doing, it establishes that the

B The UNHCR #IBELONG Campaign

In summary, the #IBELONG Campaign aims to ‘resolve existing situations of

26 Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (Continuum 2010) 9.

naturalisation; ensure birth registration for the prevention of statelessness; issue

had been rendered redundant based on previous responses. 43 The interviewees

THE UP-COUNTRY TAMILS AND SRI LANKA — A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

A The Colonial Period

Act No 35 on 11 November 2003 to extend citizenship to this very group. 80 Even

FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

A Four Human Rights: Healthcare, Education, Employment and Political

As compared with all other demographic groups, it is Sri Lanka’s Up-Country

Overall, the majority of questionnaire survey respondents indicated that access to

so. 102 However, the lack of reported improvement is marginally more

The majority of questionnaire survey respondents indicated that access to schools

Would you say your access to government healthcare

Totals Results by Region

Would you say your access to government school outside

Totals Results by Region

Figure 3 109 Figure 4

town because of the transportation problems. If people come and offer

Totals Results by Region

Figure 5 118 Figure 6

115 Interview with Annamalai (Patrick Balazo, 10 August 2016).

Would you say your ability to participate in the local,

Totals Results by Region

Belonging is difficult to define and difficult to appraise. As previously noted, this

Overall, would you say your community has benefitted from

Totals Results by Region

Would you say your community has achieved equality with

Totals Results by Region

of the latter. Of the 11 remaining interviewees, two were unable to comment

1 The Rural Rights Deficit

The rural rights deficit outlined above is underpinned by three interconnected

131 UNHCR Special Report (n 3) 16.

interviewees, it is poverty that precludes them from access to non-estate schools

differently, belonging may be realised in one’s immediate family and community,

136 Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Intersectionality, Citizenship and Contemporary Politics of Belonging’

145 Four of 30 interviewees revealed inaction, accommodation or resignation as a response to

On 15 November 1948, Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population was rendered

researchers, and that labelling what is perceived to be quiescence as inaction,

157 UNHCR Special Report (n 3).

1. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to access

2. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to access

3. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to secure

1. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to access

2. Since the 2003 grant of citizenship, has your access to government

7. Prior to the 2003 grant of citizenship, were you able to secure

8. Since the 2003 grant of citizenship, has your ability to secure

9. Are there employment opportunities available to you other than those

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